Top Prison Reform Quotes

Favorite Prison Reform Quotes

1. "I have received no assurance that anything we can do will eradicate suffering. I think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health, or peace. I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can."Author: C.S. Lewis

2. "Taking an abolitionist stance does not mean refusing to engage in incremental change, nor does it mean abandoning efforts to improve conditions inside prisons. Rather, abolitionists engage in 'abolitionist reforms' or 'non-reformist reforms.' These are reforms that either directly undermine the prison industrial complex or provide support to prisoners through strategies that weaken, rather than strengthen, the prison system itself. For example, rather than lobbying for bigger prison health budgets to care for elderly prisoners, an abolitionist reform strategy would aim to get elderly prisoners out on compassionate release to obtain healthcare in the community. --S. Lamble"Author: Eric A. Stanley

3. "I want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that the criminal justice system is rotten."Author: Henry Louis Gates

4. "The employment of children is doing more to fill prisons, insane asylums, almshouses, reformatories, slums, and gin shops than all the efforts of reformers are doing to improve society."Author: Mother Jones

5. "I am glad you like what I said of Mrs. Elizabeth Fry (prison and mental hospital reformer). She is very unpopular with the clergy; examples of living, active virtue disturb our repose and give one to distressing comparisons; we long to burn her alive."Author: Sydney Smith